Jon Bohm

“To be able to listen to others in a sympathetic and understanding manner is perhaps the most effective mechanism in the world for getting along with people and tying up their friendship for good. Too few people practice the ‘white magic’ of being good listeners.”- Oliver Wendell Holmes

I went through a drive-thru burger joint today, and as I was speaking with the cashier by means of the telecom something hit me. First of all nobody likes that crazy telecom because it is like speaking to the Mars Rover. But one thing any good cashier does well is “active listening.”

“Active Listening” is simply listening to what a person says with enough purpose to repeat back to them in your own words what you heard them say. In the drive-thru, sure this is important, but in relationships it is a necessity. And very few, I mean very few, people do this well.

I once heard someone say that being listened to is so close to being loved that most people can’t tell the difference. When was the last time someone really listened to you? To how you were thinking about something, what you were experiencing, or what you were feeling?

When was the last time you truly listened to someone yourself with enough intent to actually repeat back what you heard, and make sure you understood. Not to take an order at a drive-thru, but because you care. I have noticed that very few people do this very well at any function. Your ability to simply talk to others about what they are thinking, feeling, and experiencing will give you a distinct advantage among your competition.

Have you ever had a salesperson try to get you to buy something who never listened to you, never found out what you needed, and demonstrated they didn’t care enough about you or your situation to listen? If you have, I can almost guarantee one thing; you didn’t buy.

Whether you are a sales person, a supervisor, a minister, a counselor, a spouse, parent, friend, coach, or simply buying your gas we can all pay forward the biggest free gift available to personal interaction. The gift of listening with your ears wide open.

-Jon Bohm

Inspiration/Values, Knowledge, Leadership

John Killinger tells of the time when W. Clement Stone, the Chicago financier and philanthropist, was asked how he had done so much in his lifetime. Stone’s reply was this: “I have dreamed. I have turned my mind loose to imagine what I wanted to do. Then I have gone to bed and thought about my dreams. In the night, I have
dreamed about them. And when I have arisen in the morning, I have seen the way to get to my dreams. While other people were saying, ‘You can’t do that, it isn’t possible,’ I was well on my way to achieving what I wanted.”

It has been said many times that the person standing on the sideline saying it can’t be done is often surpassed by the person doing it.

Behavioral scientists will tell you that in your formative years, between 6 months and 5 years, our basic personality is formed. The way we view the world and understand how we interact with our surroundings. The interesting part about that bit of information is that close to 80% of everything we heard was negative:

Goals, Inspiration/Values, Motivation

I have always been a swing for the fences kind of guy. As my wife tells me all the time “Either go big or go home!”
This can be a bad way to live sometimes. For example if I haven’t swung a golf club in a year I have a tendency to still go play 36 holes my first day, and try to hit the longest drive of my life. Needless to say, my chiropractor makes some great money off me the beginning of golf season.

But it can be a great way to live as well. Some of the most successful baseball players in the world consistently have around 2 times as many strike outs as they do home runs. Every 3rd time Hank Aaron or Barry Bonds would come to the plate they would hit a home run. The other 2 times they would strike out and have a seat on the bench. Success for a home run hitter is nothing short of hitting a home run. Which means they do not come to the plate with their manager asking them to just bunt. They do not come to the plate to swing shyly and play conservative baseball. They come to the plate to swing for the fences. Nothing short of success is aimed at. This comes with some consequences. They strike out a lot. But man, they do excel when they connect.

This mentality can be referred to as “throughput.” In business a “throughput” mentality means that you do not step into the batter’s box shyly, you step in ready to swing hard at every good pitch. It means you will do whatever it takes to succeed. You are not interested in merely surviving. You want to thrive. You will spend whatever you have to spend, you will work as hard and as smart as you need to work, you will step out of your comfort zone and put your head through a wall if thats what it takes.

The opposite of “throughput” is “cost-put.” A “cost-put” player is asked to bunt. Their only goal is to not “strike out.” They aren’t trying to thrive. If they can simply survive and make it to a base, then they are happy. This player steps into the batter’s box shyly, they play conservative, and simply try not to fail completely. This mentality has some advantages: they strike out far less, they become an expert at playing “it safe,” and if they survive they are still on the team. But it also comes with some disadvantages: They will never ever hit a home run, nobody will ever know their name, and they will never know what it’s like to make the money the home run hitters make or feel the rush of thriving in their sport.

In business a “cost-put” mentality says “How can I save money, cut costs, and just survive.” They play conservative and they strike out far less.

Let’s take a restaurant for example. This restaurant has 50 tables but only fills about 25 of them.

A “cost-put” mentality says “How can I sell those 25 tables, move into a smaller place, and cut costs across the board?”

A “throughput” mentality says “How can I fill those tables to capacity? I will spend whatever I have to spend, work as hard and as smart as I have to work, and will settle for nothing less than success at what I set out to do.”

Which mentality will survive? Which one will thrive? Which one will strike out?

Which mentality are you? Are you “cost-put?” Or are you “Throughput?”

I guess that really depends on whether or not you want to survive or thrive.

I recommend swinging for the fences. Life is too valuable and too short to merely survive. You must find a way to thrive. And in my experience the businesses just trying to survive very rarely do. And the businesses that will settle for nothing less than success often thrive and almost always survive. Because, even when you strike out once, or twice, you still get in the box the 3rd time to hit the home run…. after all, you will settle for nothing less than success.

- Jon Bohm

Uncategorized

Watching big, “Lake Effect,” snow flakes fall from a winter sky in Upstate New York is a beautiful thing. Landing on thick oak and pine branches and floating down onto the window sill would make a great winter day. And to top off a great winter day we would make a fire and read a book as the fire crackled and the snow fell outside.

A real fire takes at least 2 good logs an hour, usually more, and if you really want it to put out some warmth you have to add twice that. It is a pretty obvious thing to anyone who has made a fire that you won’t feel the heat until you put some wood on the flames.

In the same way you have to put some “wood” on the fire of your business or life before you see growth, profits, and feel the heat. “Wood” could mean books, training, advertising, marketing, sales training, management development or supervisory training. And if you need any of those things be sure to give me a call. But all those things are only good if they are aligned with the strategic direction and plan of the organization.

Wood that really puts out the heat means you have to strategically plan what you need to accomplish, develop your employees to align with that plan, and then set goals and execute that plan in a systematic way that maximizes your resources to see the bottom line improve.

Occasionally I meet business folks who say they will plan their business when they have time, or develop their sales force after they improve their bottom line, or we will align the organization after we get through this quarter.

That sounds just as silly to me as saying, “I will add some wood to this fire once this fire starts putting out some real heat.” In business, planning and executing strategic goals is not a “chicken and the egg” thing. It is the difference between “success and failure.”

Happy Planning!
-Jon Bohm

Knowledge, Leadership

Sometimes when the economy slows down, the temptation of a business or as an individual is to cut back on training and development of ourselves or our employee’s and supervisors.  When the opposite is often a better strategic decision.  When things are slow, what better time could there be to use that extra time to train your people to be ready to rock and roll when things pick up?  

Proper training is essential for good productivity. The time spent on learning a new job or technique will be more than made up for in the amount of work accomplished through knowledge.

1) Do your employees and supervisors have the proper skills to carry out their jobs successfully? How could you train them to work more efficiently and independently?

2) How might you benefit by having a more knowledgeable and highly skilled team?

Knowledge

To reach the port of success we must sail, sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but we must sail, not drift or lie at anchor. — Oliver Wendell Holmes

I pushed the button on the dash to my Jeep today that allows me to keep track of my ever increasingly valued gas mileage. As I drove, I could watch my mileage go up and down, depending on how heavy I was on the peddle and how much coasting I allowed the car to do.

The thing about it was, that even when I let the car coast on flat ground or up a hill it really didn’t help my mileage all that much. The only time I really saw a rise in my mileage was when I was coasting down hill.

I tell you this story because it reminds me of myself at times, and so many people I have met in my life. Tomorrow is Monday, and I am gearing up for the work week. As I prepare, I realize even on Sunday night I have a choice. A choice to coast through the week, or put the peddle to the metal. And just like my Jeep, I realize that you can really only coast downhill. So unless I am willing to watch my career, my impact on the world, and my family life go down hill, I better not be doing any coasting.

Be Driven and accelerate your potential this week.

- Jon Bohm

Inspiration/Values, Motivation

The worst answer available to a question of “Why?” Is just another answer that demands another “Why?”

Like when you were little and your Mom would say “Because I said so.” or:
“Because you are supposed to.”
“Because your manager asked you to.”
“Because it is what we have always done.”
“Because your boss will get a great bonus.” etc.

Those aren’t answers to anything. When you are leading your life or your team–do you have a clear and compelling goal, vision, or passion inducing reason for you or your team to come and work everyday?

Imagine this-

It’s an average day at work. You come home dead tired. After collapsing in your favorite chair, your spouse reminds you that tonight is your bowling league night. So, after about an hour’s rest, you go to the lanes.
Once there, you bowl for hours and throw that 16-pound ball about a hundred times, and you feel great. But think of this: if you have the manager remove the pins from the lane, how long do you think your energy and interest would last? After about four or five throws, you would be pooped and ready to go home and into bed.

Set yourself a goal. If you have a goal to reach, you will be given enough drive to achieve it.

In today’s workplace a paycheck is not hardly enough to keep most employees. If a paycheck is your answer to “Why?” then your turnover will be high.

To help set some pins in the lane for you or your team ask yourself:

1. What is the big picture that we are a part of?

For example - If you make plastic bottles for Pepsi, your big picture might be to make the best soda available for consumption at ball games, at parties, at picnics and hotdog stands all over the region! You are making the world a better place one bottle at a time. As opposed to, “I put bottle “A” in blower machine “B” all day, so that I get my paycheck and go home.”

2. What recognition can you give your team for a game well played?
For example: An announcement, a reward, or a bonus.

3. What “team” or “family” can you create around your work place? Do the supervisors get invited to afterwork social activities with the managers? Can you create a night out once a month that benefits team development? Or, is the Christmas party only for the managers?

4. What productivity incentives can be applied to the work day? For example: The most succesful contractor I know sets a goal before his crew every morning. If the crew completes that goal they go home. It could be noon or it could be 10 pm, it’s up to them. But if they finish by noon, they get paid for the full day. His crew gets more done in a 1/2 day then most crews do in 2 full days.

It’s a matter of keeping the lane full of pins.
-Jon Bohm

Goals, Leadership, Motivation

Risk an ugly result and innovate!

This morning I saw an actual balloon pilot aviator’s license from 1906 signed by Orville Wright himself. An icon and amazing man died this past week. He had spent a majority of his life in aviation, dating all the way back to seeing the first planes take flight.

It often blows my mind to think back on what a 100 year old person has experienced. They have seen more than my mind can imagine. They have felt, seen, and touched things that I can only read about.

And they know some things that many people today don’t understand. One of those things, I believe, is the value of first time dreams, innovation, and trying something that often comes out not working very well or risks operating like a bucket of bolts.

So often business owners are gun shy about trying things that we fear may not come out well. But how well has anything that was every worth a shiny penny ever started off brilliant? Innovation doesn’t start that way. It starts in Henry Ford’s garage looking like an old lawnmower, or on an ugly tan piece of plastic that you give away because nobody wants to by a computer with an “apple” on it, or with 2 brothers building a bicycle with some sheets spread out running down the beach in North Carolina.

Business guru Tom Peters tells about a businessman whom he admires whose motto is “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” “The logic is impeccable,” says Peters. He points out that the plane the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk was nothing to write home about. Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone was not exactly up to Bell Lab standards. Yet if Bell hadn’t foisted that piece of junk on the world we wouldn’t have a vast communication network that can instantly link anyone on this planet, and if Orville and Wilbur hadn’t gone for lift-off with that bucket of bolts down at Kitty Hawk, we wouldn’t have 747s.
Peters goes on to say, “I emphasize the point because the number one failing that I see in small and large organizations is the failure to do stuff. . . In an environment where we know nothing for sure, the only antidote is, to quote my old man, ‘Don’t just stand there. Do Something!’”

Taking the time to risk failure and doing something beats using the same old thing or just standing around any day!
One of the advantages of a soft economy can be that you find yourself with some more time. So don’t just stand there- do something- risk an ugly result, and innovate!

- Jon Bohm

Innovation, Leadership, Motivation

What if your greatest success in life was birthed from your darkest moment, your scariest challenge, or our biggest fear?

Adversity is your greatest friend or your biggest enemy, it all depends on how you deal with it.

I don’t know what adversity you may have gone through in your life, but we all have it in one form or another. For me; surviving cancer was my greatest adversity. As tough as it was, and as much as I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, I am grateful for what I learned; as well as how it shaped me into who I am today.

And strangely enough am not alone in that. On many occasions I have heard other survivors say they were thankful for the experience. Adversity makes us face internal obstacles that we would never have overcome otherwise, it makes us face external obstacles that we wouldn’t have had the strength to conquer without that experience. Obstacles and adversity simply become hurdles on the track of life, that once you clear each hurdle you are that much closer to becoming who you can and want to be.

Here is a true story of just such a situation:

Anna Mary Moses loved to do needlework. She had been enjoying it since before she was married. But as she began to get older, she started to lose some of the dexterity in her hands through arthritis. By the time she was eighty, she could no longer perform even the simplest stitches. Therefore she decided to try something different—painting. The brushes were easy enough to handle, even with her arthritis, so she took it up full time, mostly painting farm and country scenes.
One day a traveling art collector stopped for a bite to eat in her town and saw her pictures in a drugstore. He decided that he liked them, and in a very short time the name of Grandma Moses was known throughout the art world. Although Grandma Moses didn’t even start painting until she was eighty years old, she was able to create over fifteen hundred works of art in her lifetime. She had an international following, and prominence as a world-class painter.
All this because she was forced to quit her favorite pastime and take up a new one.

May adversity never be a roadblock, but simply a hurdle, that once cleared puts you that much closer to achieving your goals.

-Jon Bohm

Goals, Inspiration/Values, Motivation

Change is a funny and powerful thing.

Have you ever noticed that when you or someone you know tries to break away from the “Land of Status Quo” into the “Land of Positive Change and Rewards” things can get difficult?

It is often like a bucket of crabs. When one tries to escape all the other crabs work real hard at pulling them back into the bucket. And so it is with people. When someone tries to break out of the status quo and make some real positive and big steps in the right direction, you can find yourself with some discouraging thoughts and questions as you are sucked back into the bucket.

You’ll start hearing things like:
• What are you doing?
• Why do you want to do that?
• Stay here where you belong.

As you face even more obstacles, you’ll start getting noise in your own head. You might hear yourself saying things like:
• What am I thinking?
• Can I really do this?
• This is a lot harder than I thought.
• Is it really worth it?

The Noise often gets so loud that many return to the “land of status quo” in disappointment. But when you can push through the noise and get to the “land of positive change and results” you will begin to enjoy the rewards of your hard work. And other people in the “land of status quo,” who were watching you break out, often find themselves inspired to do the same. Before you know it, you are leading change in the most powerful way, by example.

Back during the days of the space race, Wernher Von Braun gave a lecture on the subject of putting a man on the moon. When his lecture was finished, he asked for questions.
A woman’s hand immediately shot up: “Why,” she asked, “can’t you forget about getting people on the moon and stay home and watch television like the good Lord intended for you to do?”

Change is what carries us into the future. If you can’t change, you will be stuck in the past.

Some questions for personal reflection:

1) Are you worrying over something you can’t change? What can you do to “let go”?
2) How might a change in perspective or outlook improve your team’s productivity?
3) What are the changes you’d like to make in your lifestyle? List the benefits of changing and the steps you’d need to take in order to change. Find people who will support you.
4) How might you be an encourager to a friend or colleague who is trying to make a change?

Goals, Knowledge, Leadership, Motivation